NOW: trooper says Speaker Glen Casada’s office has asked them to have women move who are in Rep. David Byrd’s committee meeting holding 8×11” signs and speaking to lawmakers during recess. pic.twitter.com/kbCI738Umz

The Associated Press reports the women sitting in the audience held signs at face-level reading “Enough is enough,” “Take a stand,” and “Protect constituents.” Three women have accused Bryd of sexual misconduct when they were teenage basketball players and he was their their 28-year-old high school basketball coach.

One of the women, Christi Rice, has since recorded a call to Byrd in which the lawmaker apologizes for unspecified transgressions. He has denied anything happened with other students.

“I wish I had a do-over because I promise you I would have corrected that and that would’ve never happened,” Byrd said in the recorded call. “But I hope you believe me when I say that it’s one of those things that I think about it all the time, and I always ask forgiveness for it and I hope you forgive me.”

Casada’s predecessor, Beth Harwell, had demanded Byrd’s resignation after the allegations were first aired by WSMV-TV last year. But Casada has deemed the allegations to be “fake news” and appointed Byrd chairman of an education subcommittee after he was overwhelmingly re-elected in November.

Over a dozen people protesting President Trump’s immigration policies “crashed” U.S. Rep. Phil Roe’s official announcement of his re-election campaign Monday, reports the Johnson City Press. One of them was a Democrat seeking her party’s nomination for the 1st Congressional seat. Roe subsequently told supporters he wants to “bury” Democrats in November.

House Democratic Leader and candidate for Governor, Craig Fitzhugh has bought Tennessee Titans Season Tickets after Republican candidate for Governor Diane Black returned hers because of her unwillingness to support several Titans’ players right to free speech.

About 45 white nationalists showed up for a Saturday rally on the University of Tennessee Knoxville campus that was led by Matthew Heimbach, leader of a group known as Traditionalist Worker Party, reports the News Sentinel. So did 250 people protesting white nationalists and about 200 law enforcement officers from four different agencies.

There were no arrests, though six people were issued tickets for obstructing a highway during the protests, according to University of Tennessee Police Chief Troy Lane.

After vocal opposition from residents in and around the Tipton County community of Randolph, located on the banks of the Mississippi River, state officials are withdrawing their current plans for the Memphis Regional Megasite’s 35-mile long wastewater pipeline, reports the Memphis Daily News.

Women’s March events in Tennessee, held in conjunction with similar rallies around the nation, drew thousands of participants, according to media reports. It appears the best-attended events were in Nashville on Saturday and Knoxville on Sunday.

The Tennessee Legislature has quietly revised its “Facility Use Policies” to remove a ban on all signs within the Cordell Hull building. Moving forward, “small letter sized signs that do not obstruct the view of visitors are acceptable,” according to the policy.

Under the previous set of rules, all signs were banned, regardless of whether they were hand-held or mounted to sticks or poles. The fact that this was done in the name of preventing “a serious safety hazard to visors and tenants” was the cause of much mockery because it was imposed alongside a new policy allowing handgun carry permit holders to be armed within the building.

House Democrats announced Wednesday that Rep. Sherry Jones (D-Nashville) had requested a legal opinion from state Attorney General Herbert Slatery about whether ban on “hand-carried signs and signs on hand sticks” violates the First Amendment. Jones’ letter is dated Jan. 11.

On the opening day of the 2018 legislative session Tuesday, about 100 protesters were on hand urging Medicaid expansion in Tennessee and House Democrats made a round of speeches supporting the idea. But Republican supermajority members remained hostile to the proposal, as they have since Gov. Bill Haslam tried and failed to win approval three years ago.

Lots of law enforcement officers were on hand for an organized protest against a Memphis City Council move that led to removing statutes of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, and Confederate cavalry General Nathan Bedford Forrest, reports the Commercial Appeal. But they didn’t have much to do except watch the peaceful proceedings.